Forward-Deployed AI Engineer: Prototyping to Production

IFS; Itasca (IL); Hybrid; USD 145,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Salary range

Flexible PTO

Flexible spending accounts

Life insurance

Tuition assistance

Volunteer events

Job summary

IFS is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to work across Sales, Product, R&D, and Implementation, rapidly prototyping in customer environments to prove value. You will own outcomes from discovery through production adoption, balancing technical delivery with customer impact.

You’ll engineer for security and reliability, translate customer needs into actionable specifications, and collaborate with product teams to turn patterns into roadmaps and reusable accelerators for broader use.

Qualifications

• Customer-facing and commercial ability demonstrated in technical discovery and value conversations.
• Ability to generalize built solutions into reusable accelerators for future engagements.
• Experience with AI tooling, especially LLM applications, RAG, and multi-agent patterns.
• Familiarity with enterprise integrations (ESRI ArcGIS/Smallworld, IBM Maximo/EAM, SAP/Oracle ERP/PPM, PowerBI).
• Domain experience in asset-intensive industries (utilities, energy, transportation) or investment planning.
• Willingness to travel to customer sites up to ~50%.

Responsibilities

• Own discovery, technical scoping, architecture, implementation, and production adoption for strategic customers.
• Deploy prototypes quickly within deal timelines to prove value and guide decisions.
• Engineer for security, reliability, and integration with customer architectures.
• Build, deploy, and evaluate solutions with customer data to measure adoption and impact.
• Collaborate with Product and R&D to convert validated patterns into roadmaps and accelerators.
• Create reusable components and specifications to feed product and engineering needs.
• Partner with sales, product management, and customers to ensure measurable business value.

Skills

Customer-facing skills

Abstraction and reuse

AI and agentic engineering

Enterprise integrations

Domain knowledge - asset-intensive

Willingness to travel

Tools

Claude Code

REST APIs

PowerBI

SQL

Job description

IFS is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to work across Sales, Product, R&D, and Implementation, rapidly prototyping in customer environments to prove value. You will own outcomes from discovery through production adoption, balancing technical delivery with customer impact.

You’ll engineer for security and reliability, translate customer needs into actionable specifications, and collaborate with product teams to turn patterns into roadmaps and reusable accelerators for broader use.